Contentious issues beset high country

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 10

Contentious issues beset high country

One of the ironies of New Zealand public life is the turmoil which often builds up in the most majestic of the nation’s landforms, the South Island high country. Even if the competing interests should heed Professor Kevin O’Connor’s call to cease arguing about how much credit we should take for causing or curing soil erosion, a whole raft of intimately connected issues remain to be worried over.

The very first paper of the recent Hill and High Country seminar at Lincoln College set at least five of these issues off and running again. During the course of the two days several more joined them. Because of the mass of legislation, regulation, evocation, emotion, antecedents, scientific findings and jargon employed by almost all the protagonists a summary of the issues by way of the papers presented to the biannual seminar was called for. Especially as some of the academics believe the high country is on the threshhold yet again of upheaval, politically and socially, not geologically. In his opening paper, Mr Chris Kerr, senior research fellow in the Tussock Grassland and Mountainlands Institute of the Centre for Resource Management, identified three issues of rapidly growing significance to the management of hill and high country. They are the reform of pest control administration, the relevance of the pastoral leasehold tenure today and the meaning of soil conservation. With the diminishing public input into animal and weed pest management, land occupiers appear likely to be required to fund all the costs of control in the future. Later in the week at Lincoln a potentially memorable example of consensus government brought all sectors of the pest control movement into agreement behind a new division of responsibilities.

Mr Kerr said a T.G.M.L.I. team had identified four options for pest control administration but at the subsequent industry seminar only option four was embraced. It is to divorce a national body responsible for truly national pests, research and policy from autonomous, regional councils or boards fully funded by

ratepayers for pests of only local importance. When a pest crosses the line from local to national importance is a crucial question which won’t have escaped the notice of runholders and ratepayers from the' k dry, central areas badly infested with rabbits.

It is now up to the Government to implement the consensus, after of course studying it from every which way for disadvantages to its own departments and the consolidated fund. A related issue raised by Mr Hamish Ensor, chairman of the high country committee of Federated Farmers, is the ability of the new Department of Conservation to control pests on its unocupied Crown lands and reserves.

Mr Ensor also got very agitated about the lack of progress in the Protected Natural Areas programme. “We are on the verge of being forced to remove the last of our support to this scheme because of the impossible positions it is placing lessees in, with some even having moratoriums placed on activities which have been normal farming practices for years,” he said. "The procrastination is disgusting and if the D.0.C., as an advocate for conservation, has any backbone it will front the Government for funding and if that is not available drop the scheme and return to the old system.” Mr Ensor and Mr Kerr agreed on the origins of the pastoral leasehold tenure but certainly differed on its future. Mr Ensor claimed the leases were very successful and warned against any forced reduction in security of tenure. The pastoral lease was still required as the line or zone between land which could be alienated (or sold) and that which probably should never be.

Mr Kerr came reluctantly to the conclusion that the pastoral lease had probably had its day. “Recent history has shown it to be incapable of easily accommodating the wide range of uses to which areas of the high country are capable and for which there is a growing demand. “Without the constraints of a single-purpose land tenure, a more exciting,

varied and confident future in the high country is both possible and likely,” he said. Dr John Hayward, the chairman of the Environmental Council and the director of the Centre for Resource Management, touched another sore point when he raised the possibility of rental reviews as an inevitable implication of recent reforms.

Lessees would need to have better quality arguments when getting involved in another rental review process, he warned. He also said there was a need to find more creative ways of dealing with the conflicts which will arise with more numerous competing claims to the high country. The Professor of Rangeland Management at Lincoln, Professor O’Connor, raised the fundamental issue of the nonsustainability of pastoral use of unimproved tussock grasslands. Before this admittedly longer term concern, in some zones all other issues tend to pale. Professor O’Connor demanded the development of new agro-forestry and pastoral farming systems for tussock grasslands which restore top soil fertility, economise on fertiliser inputs, control the spread of conifers and so create new forest and grassland landscapes to replace the ones which have been disturbed.

By

HUGH STRINGLEMAN